


Cursed Blood

by taylortot



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, Blood, Demons, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fluff, Lore - Freeform, M/M, Minor Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Romance, Slow Burn, Swordfighting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-11 12:55:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15972731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylortot/pseuds/taylortot
Summary: Lance has never been so happy to be immortal until a boy he's never met before shows up one day, determined to kill him.Things are about to get really weird.





	1. Knife to Meet You

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone!! I swore to myself like 4 years ago that I'd never start a multi-chaptered fanfiction project again, but I guess that was a lie because here I am lol. This story is loosely based around the anime "Kyoukai no Kanata" (or Beyond the Boundary in English) but I've taken some major liberties with it. Some of the basic plot points from the anime will still be present, I think, but I plan on putting my own spin on it and really just borrowing elements from the show. (I do recommend watching it, though, because it's super cute and it saved my life in the fall of 2013)
> 
> There are some brief mentions of suicide at the beginning of this chapter, but no actual depictions of it. There will also be lots of mentions of blood throughout this fic, but mostly for reasons outside of gore and violence. If there are any other warnings that come up, I'll try to put them in notes at the beginning of each chapter.
> 
> Anyway, this is super self-indulgent, but I'm having a lot of fun working on this and I hope you guys have a lot of fun reading it :)

Lance has never considered suicide, which is less a testament to the quality of his life and more to his unusual circumstances.

As it is, he believes that living life to the fullest is a principal that everyone should live by. Sometimes, the only way you can be happy is if you are determined to find that happiness for yourself. But other times, some people need a little help. Lance is more than happy to oblige. He feels like it kinda makes up for who he is and what he’s done.

So, when he sees that boy all dressed in black standing on the tiny ledge of the school’s roof, he finds himself pivoting on his heel and running back inside. He races up the stairs as fast as he can, terrified that he’ll get there too late, that the boy is going to jump and then Lance will have to live with that for the rest of his life, and he can’t add that to the guilt and the growing list of “Things He Could Have Prevented” that he’s accumulated over the years.

Relief washes over him briefly when he reaches the rooftop to see the boy still standing there, his longish hair being tugged by the autumn wind that drifts by. It paints a dramatic scene as Lance’s heartbeat hammers in his chest with adrenaline. His backpack falls from his shoulder to the ground and he takes a few angry steps towards the boy, afraid that getting too close might not reap the best results.

“Hey, man!” he yells. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but don’t do it!” The boy turns his head slightly and maybe it’s because there’s nothing else noticeable about him but Lance screws his face into one of disbelief when he realizes that the dude has a fucking  _ mullet _ . “Yeah, that’s right, I’m talking to you! Don’t see any other dumbasses standing on the edge of the roof, do you?”

The boy turns his face away again, shoulders tensing, and Lance panics. “Hey! Hey, sorry! I’m just a little stressed out right now, okay? Can we talk?”

No answer. The wind blows a little more strongly and he has this irrational fear that it’s gonna blow the boy right off the roof, despite seeing very clearly that he’s sturdy enough to keep his balance.

“Okay, you don’t have to talk, that’s fine! I’ll talk!” Lance swallows his nerves, taking another step forward towards the chain link fence that circles the roof and separates him from just reaching out and yanking the boy away from the ledge. In the back of his mind, he thinks that he’s never seen him before, and while Lance kinda sucks at remembering shit, he’d probably remember seeing a 17-ish year old boy wandering around the school with a mullet in this day and age.

“You must be one of the new transfer students, right? I know how scary it can be to start at a new school. I’ve been transferred around a lot, and it never gets any easier, but there are other ways to deal with shit than this. We can get you to the school counselor? Or if you don’t wanna talk to the counselor, you can talk to me; I’m not a bad listener!”

The boy doesn’t respond at all, but as Lance slowly inches forward, he thinks he can see his fists shaking at his sides. “Don’t believe me, huh? That’s alright! Do you...do you have any friends I can call for you? Your parents, maybe? We can figure this out.”

Still, nothing.

“Look, I’m not leaving until you get away from that ledge. I can’t let a handsome guy kill himself, even if he does have a mullet.”

Lance doesn’t know what happens then. He blinks and suddenly the boy is launching himself over the fence, and maybe if his adrenaline wasn’t racing so fast in his veins, he might have realized that the boy’s agility and speed were not typical for a human. He takes a few steps back as the boy slides to a stop in front of him, thick eyebrows drawn in sharply over a pair of eyes that are as dark as a midnight sky. 

He looks  _ pissed. _

“Do you ever shut the fuck up?” he hisses, yanking a bandage from his wrist.

Again, Lance blames the weird situation for not being better prepared for it. It’s not like he hasn’t been in this position before but it’s been a while. He’s standing there half-terrified, half-surprised with his mouth gaping open like an idiot when he feels the blinding hot pain searing into him. Immediately, all of his strength leaves him; he can feel his blood rushing into his lungs, bubbling up his throat and he collapses onto his knees, looking down in disbelief at the sword lodged deeply in his chest.

He breathes as deeply as he can manage, coughing on the blood in his throat as he turns his pained expression on the boy holding the sword. Where the hell was he hiding that thing? His clothes are way too tight to have hidden a weapon like that on his person, and the thing has him skewered like a damn kabob.

“Dude,” Lance mutters, and blood dribbles from his mouth. “What the  _ fuck _ ? I  _ just _ bought this shirt.”

The boy dislodges the sword quickly, his eyes growing wide with surprise and confusion, stumbling back a step. As soon as the weapon is removed, Lance can feel his body quickly repairing the damage, a really annoying - almost agonizing - itch that stitches his skin and organs back together seamlessly, his strength returning to him in a surge. Only an echo of the blistering pain shivers through him and then entirely disappears. He wipes the blood away from his mouth with the back of his wrist and looks back down at the bloody hole in his new shirt.

He falls back to sit on the concrete, looks at the splash of blood on the ground, and then glares up at the boy who stares down at him, expression unreadable.

“Why aren’t you dead?” the boy asks, sounding disturbed, uncomfortable, his dark eyes raking over Lance with unease. “What are you?”

Lance gestures to the crimson red sword in the boy’s hand - is he wearing  _ fingerless gloves _ ? - still dripping with Lance’s blood. “I could ask you the same thing, asshole. Do you make a habit of walking around stabbing innocent people - who are  _ trying _ to save your life, mind you - with a freaky-deaky magic sword? Were you raised in a barn?”

The boy furrows his eyebrows, looks down at the weapon as he grips it with both hands and swings it up high before burying it to the hilt in Lance’s chest. Again.

:

:

:

:

:

:

:

:

:

:

 

Lance learns exactly three things following the first encounter with the boy dressed in black, and he learns them completely against his will.

One, is that the boy’s name is Keith Kogane. The name Kogane sounds extremely familiar, but Lance is too salty about the guy’s behavior to care enough to look into it. Keith certainly hadn’t been forthcoming about introducing himself when he’d tried to kill him on the rooftop. Lance only gets to put a name to the face when he reads an email sent from Shiro that very same night about a new spirit hunter moving into the area. Too little, too late, Shiro. Lance’s new baseball tee will have to rest in bloodstained peace... _ pieces _ .

Two, is that Keith Kogane is a fucking psycho. A whole ass mess of crazy, straight out of some shitty B-style horror movie. Constantly wound up with snarls and biting remarks, his thick eyebrows drawn in so far over his dark, dark eyes it’s kind of a miracle that he doesn’t set things on fire just by looking at them. Brandishing a sword made out of his _ own fucking blood _ . Yeah, turns out he wasn’t hiding it in his pants. True nightmare fuel.

And three, it’s that Pidge is a sadistic little shit. Which, to be fair, he already knew, but Christ, she really likes to show her colors when it counts, doesn’t she?

“I don’t know why you think this is so funny.”

Pidge does a terrible job at hiding her laughter. Lance can’t even give her credit for trying. “I mean, it is though.”

He sighs and slumps down in in his chair further, narrowing his gaze at her. “You know what’s funny? The fact that you knew mullet-head was in town and didn’t bother to warn me. Freakin’  _ hilarious _ .” His sarcasm would have scalded anyone else, but Pidge is unbothered. Her baby-faced roundness is a total deception of her actual personality: she will gut you and make you watch. She’ll laugh over your dead corpse and dance on your grave.

Unfortunately for Lance, the torture is destined to be endless.

She smirks at him, leaning on the table with one elbow. “I told you, it slipped my mind that day. Anyways, Shiro literally sent you an email that night out of courtesy, not necessity; we don’t report to you. Stop whining about this. It happened like a week ago.”

Lance uncrosses one arm from over his chest to wag a finger in the air, furrowing his eyebrows. “Oh no. No, no. It happens every single day without fail. I’m starting to think it’s his twisted idea of fun or something.” He scrunches his face up as he recalls the phantom pain of being repeatedly stabbed and sliced. He’d even lost the entirety of his left hand before his body replicated the missing appendage almost immediately. It took him two days to be able to write with it again without feeling funny. “This is a serious issue; I don’t know how much longer I can take it.”

Pidge responds with a snicker and Lance sighs deeply, mostly to himself. He’s honestly getting really tired of this being treated as a laughing matter. Like...okay, maybe the first time would have been a funny story by now, but a week and a half and a dozen other encounters later, it’s awful. Plain and simple, it’s  _ awful _ . He’s been forced to come to school early and stay later just avoid a scene where the wacko approaches him, sword drawn, and assaults him in front of normal people. 

They might be able to explain away the sword as a toy, but when Lance doesn’t keel over dead in a puddle of his own blood, someone, somewhere is going to have questions. A lot of questions. He’s already got enough on his plate without having to worry about the actual Council coming down on his head for a flagrant disregard for their number one rule. They aren’t his biggest fan to begin with.

Pidge leans back in her chair, stretching her hands up over her head and rolling her shoulders. “Have you talked to him?”

He rolls his eyes. “Kind of hard to talk while being impaled. Don’t believe me? You should try it sometime.”

She gives him an unimpressed look. “You really wanna go there?” When he doesn’t respond, she continues, “Just tell the guy off.”

That seems like a very stupid idea, mostly because the last time Lance attempted conversation, he’d been cussed out for talking too much. And then stabbed. Twice.

Before he can respond, there’s a scuffling sound outside the classroom door. Lance meets Pidge’s gaze across the table with an extremely bored look on his face.

“That him?” She raises an eyebrow.

“Probably.”

“Well? Go tell him to leave you alone.”

When Lance doesn’t move, she gives him a sympathetic look. “Lance, if you can’t get this guy to lay off, I’ll get Matt involved, but since Kogane is another spirit hunter and we have no idea what clan he’s from, it’s best if you try to diffuse the situation, okay?”

He stares at her for a long second, weighing the pros and cons of calling his own shots on this one. As a general rule, the less the Shirogane clan is involved in his messes, the better, but there’s something extremely suspicious about them not knowing where this guy came from. She has to be lying. He’s sure of it.

It’s almost convincing, but Lance learned long ago not to trust anyone who didn’t first trust him. It’s the first lesson he ever learned growing up, and he’s never been able to trust Pidge, not really. She’s...shifty. Spends too much time with her awkward brother who is unapologetically wary of Lance’s presence in the city. Never speaks to him plainly, always watching him as if he might grow a second head and bite her hers off if she looks away for too long.

If there’s a reason that she’s lying about where the new guy is from then that means it definitely involves Lance, and that no one under Shiro’s jurisdiction trusts him with the information. It puts Lance on edge and he can’t help but feel jittery as Pidge stares at him, almost in a challenge. He licks his lips.

Seems like he really will have to take matters into his own hands, then.

“Fine. Fine, I’ll try,” he relents, standing up, pushing his chair back in. “If I’m not back in ten minutes it means I’m dead.”

She rolls her eyes and opens her laptop. “Don’t make any promises you can’t keep.”

“Wow. Tell me how you really feel.” 

She waves him off, fixing her attention on her computer screen in complete dismissal. Lance takes a deep breath as he walks towards the door, wondering what the odds are that he’ll be stabbed through the middle the second he steps foot outside.

When he enters the hallway, there is no one and nothing there and its silent as a snowfall. He catches his breath, tucks his hands into his pockets and sways on his feet. Maybe he was just being paranoid when they heard that sound right outside of the classroom door? It’s possible. He’s never been quite this paranoid in his entire life.

Well, now that he’s up, he might as well grab a soda from the vending machine down the hall or something. He starts walking down the corridor towards the stairwell. Maybe he can convince Pidge that he took care of the situation and--

A footstep. Close behind him. The rest of the hallway is empty.

He tenses. His muscles are seized up so tight that a snap of a rubber band could probably split him in two.

He’s right to be paranoid, apparently.

“So, you’re stalking me now?” he tries out, afraid to turn around. He’s proud of himself when his voice comes out strong and not all wobbly with dreaded anticipation. “Stalker, harasser, would-be murderer. Cool, cool. Your resume is really coming together.”

He’s met with silence, but it’s better than being met with the sharp end of that sword.

Slowly, Lance turns around to find Keith standing in the middle of the hallway, his eyebrows furrowed, mouth pinched, dressed in dark colors. His skin is so pale he could be a dead guy walking; when is the last time he saw any sunlight? Maybe ten thousand years ago when his soulless body was laid to rest in a casket.

Lance can see the little bit of the bandage he wears on his lower arm poking out between the sleeve of his sweatshirt and the cuff of his fingerless gloves and he’s relieved. Keith always removes the bandages before manipulating his blood into a weapon, and if he’s wearing them now then it means he doesn’t intend to fight. Probably.

“Can I help you?” Lance raises an eyebrow, propping his hands on his hips as he shifts his weight. For a long moment, no one says anything and Lance can feel the silence like an air bubble in his chest. It’s so uncomfortable he nearly turns and walks away. In hindsight, he probably should have. “Hello, space cadet? Gonna answer me?”

Keith blinks once, and then twice, the rest of him unchanging. “Fuck off.”

Lance scowls at that, immediately annoyed. “Like hell! You’re the one who should be fucking off!” A hot, angry blush works his way up into his face. He takes a few steps towards Keith and doesn’t know if he should be alarmed that the other boy doesn’t step away or not. “Look, I don’t know how many times I have to say this to get it through your thick mullet, but” - he cups his hands around his mouth - “I’m  _ immortal _ . You can stab me all you like, but I’m not gonna die. You’re wasting your time. Go find another paycheck.”

Keith crosses his arms over his chest, the sleeve riding up to show even more of the bandage as he glares. There are shadows under his eyes, but it could just be from the fringe of his hair hiding half of his face. “Paycheck?”

Lance wrinkles his nose, seeing right through him. Is he trying to be funny or is he really just that much of an asshole? Probably the latter. “You suck at playing dumb, man. Do you have any idea how many times you’ve stabbed me this week?!”

Monotone disinterest. “You’re keeping count?”

“How can I not? Do you know how bad that shit hurts?” This guy is certifiably crazy. He has to be. Holy shit. “Just because I can’t die doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt!”

Keith narrows his eyes on him, giving him a snarled look, like some old crusty thorn bush on an abandoned plot of land. “ _ Youmu _ shouldn’t be able to survive so many fatal wounds. Maybe you should just take after the rest of your kind and die already.”

_ Oh, gee, if only. _ Lance wishes he could burn Keith with the force of his glare. “Half.”

“What?” Keith grinds the word out as if he’s being forced to say it, almost awkward in the way he asks. It’s the first thing he’s said to Lance that isn’t full of scathing confidence and hatred and it’s only a single word. Probably shouldn’t count as progress of any kind, but Lance is the kind of guy to take small victories where he can get them.

“I’m only half- _ youmu _ ,” Lance clarifies, frowning. “Half-human.”

At the word ‘human’, Keith’s entire expression goes blank and it’s the first time that Lance has seen him without absolute fury twisting his whole face. He jerks away from Lance like he’d been burned, taking a step back, and there is the slightest flicker of utmost confusion in his eyes. The moment passes quickly, though, giving way to a guarded look that is two parts pissed-off and one part agitated. Lance is left feeling like he just experienced whiplash first hand. 

“Why should that matter?” Keith says harshly.

“Excuse me?” Lance has to shake his head to clear his own confusion, making mental leaps to catch up to Keith’s wild and unexpected mood swing.

“As long as you’re a  _ youmu _ and I’m a spirit hunter, I can kill you as many times as I want.”

Well. So much for progress. 

“I’m not just--just some low-level boss in a video game, asshole.” Lance makes a noise of utter frustration and runs a hand down his face, feeling exhausted. Attracting unwanted attention from other spirit hunters has always been his biggest curse, but never by one so fucking persistent. God, why isn’t Shiro doing anything about this again? Wasn’t the whole point of moving to this city to gain protection from deranged lunatics like Keith Kogane?

Keith makes direct, blistering eye contact with him and slowly flips him off before turning on his heel and storming away down a connected hallway. Lance watches him go with disdain, wrinkling his nose again in displeasure. At least he doesn’t have to worry about hiding any bloodstains on his clothing on his walk home. Again, small victories.

Pidge doesn’t look up from her computer when he reenters the classroom, engaged in whatever online college course she is taking this semester.  “You’re still in one piece,” she says without looking to inspect if he is or not.

“For now,” he grumbles, picking up a stack of books from the table and walking towards the bookshelves. A flicker of Keith’s wildfire temper splashes across his mind, bright red, before he pushes it away with a huff. “That guy hates my guts.”

She hums. “I doubt he hates you. He doesn’t even know you.”

Lance almost smiles. “Aww, Pidge, that’s actually kind of--”

“Now, I, on the other hand, have every reason to--” She cuts off in a peel of laughter when she looks up to see the scowl that has quickly formed on his face, clear as day across the space between them. 

He turns away from her. He’s used to her ribbing, so it doesn’t sting much, especially since he knows that they are forced together like this by Shiro and not of their own accord. Still, it’s obnoxious that he can’t get her to take him seriously for two seconds before making a joke at his expense. He feels frayed, stressed from the hostile energy radiating off of Kogane and bruised by Pidge and the entirety of the Shirogane clan for their indifference.

In short, this whole situation just really fucking sucks.

He misses his sister.

“Whatever. I just don’t understand why he’s so persistent,” he says, shelving the books. He thinks briefly of the way Keith had faltered when he mentioned that he is half-human. “The only other reason anyone has a motivation to act out like that …” Lance pauses, slowing his angry motions as he carefully slides the last book into its place on the shelf. “Shit, he’s not in love with me, is he?”

Pidge snorts. “Yeah, sure. Love. Bet you can really feel the love when he’s shoving his knife through your heart.”

Yeah, okay. Point. He grimaces. “Thank god, you’re right. Even if I am irresistible, the last thing I need is someone rubbing their mullet-y hands all over me.”

She deadpans. “First of all, if you ever use the term ‘mullet-y hands’ again, I will ask Kogane for his sword and stab you myself. Secondly, you do realize all you ever do is talk about his hair, right?”

“That’s because it’s disgusting.” 

“I’m sure you’re right.” Another deadpan snarky comment. Lance deigns not to grace it with a response. A brief silence settles over them as they work on their own prospective things. He grabs another stack of books that he’d gotten out earlier as study material to put away, going through the motions meticulously as his mind whirls.

He wanders over the conversation - an actual conversation, so he’s reinstating the progress - with Keith. He pieces what he’s deducted over the past week together, using most of the knowledge he learned today when Pidge wasn’t aware that she was giving anything away.

Pidge is lying about not knowing who Keith is. She definitely knows, but Lance thinks that with some prodding and poking around he can probably figure that out on his own. Better not to push her or he could end up with a big fat pile of regret and ‘too stupid to function’ feelings. No matter how familiar they are, he is well aware that she doesn’t have his best interests at heart.

Shiro isn’t getting involved even though he’d made a promise to Veronica, specifically, that he’d keep Lance safe. It probably means that inserting himself into Keith’s business is more dangerous than Lance, which feels like a reach, but his intuition is almost always right. The idea of something being more dangerous than Lance is terrifying, especially if it means Shiro isn’t going to be all nosey about it. Shiro is, like,  _ always  _ kinda nosey.

And then there’s Keith, who, for whatever reason, is obsessed with him. 

Yeah, Lance has no fucking clue where to even start with that. He’s...well, confused doesn’t seem like a strong enough word, but it’ll have to do. He’s really, really confused.

“You should stay away from him, Lance.” Her voice breaks across the room like like plunging through a thin layer of ice on a lake in winter. Shocking and bitter cold. Wasn’t she the one who had just encouraged him to...to tell Keith to leave him alone. Oh.

“I’d like to,” he complains, looking over to find her gathering her things. 

She looks up at him through the wide lenses of her glasses. “I’m serious. This…” Pidge shoves her laptop in her back and hooks it up on her shoulder. “This isn’t a suggestion, okay?”

He stares at her as she leaves, knowing that her words are half of a threat, but unsure what to make of it. He thinks that he’d rather be chased down and stabbed. At least he knows where he stands in that situation.

:

:

Avoiding Keith is as impossible as he expected.

The next day, he lingers behind in the classroom for as long as he can, waiting until the sky has turned orange with sunset, softening everything into a dream. He has this blinding hope that maybe if he hides long enough, then Keith will give up and go home without harassing him. Worth a shot, at least. So he stays, completes his homework for tomorrow and stares listlessly out the window to watch students trickle home.

Eventually, though, the teachers are rounding up the last of the students in the afternoon study halls because they’ll be locking the doors, so he has to leave. 

Keith is waiting for him outside of the classroom in an empty hallway, leaning up against the wall, looking all dark and broody as usual. He meets Lance’s eyes when the door closes shut behind him and there’s a long moment of silence before Lance breaks under the pressure and speaks.

“So, we’re really doing this again, huh,” Lance mutters, watching with dismay as Keith pushes up the sleeve of his sweatshirt and starts to slowly unravel the bandage on his arm. He absently runs a hand across the most abused spot on his chest and winces, tightening his grip on the one strap of his backpack on his shoulder.

One end of the bandage flutters to the floor before Keith begins to roll it up and Lance watches as a drop of blood beads at his wrist, just under the cuff of his glove. “Why do you stay so late?” Keith asks, sounding irritated. Oh, had he wanted to be home already? Fancy that. Trying to murder Lance must really be important to him. Another curious piece of this puzzle.

“You didn’t have to wait for me,” Lance says, scrunching up his face, the words bitter in his mouth. 

Keith gives him a measured look, waiting for an answer. Saying absolutely nothing. Dude is good at that.

Lance sighs. “If you must know, it’s because I don’t really want you to assault me in front of--”

“I’m not an idiot, Lance,” Keith scowls and Lance knows it’s ridiculous, knows with absolute certainty that all of those fatal wounds must have messed with his head because there’s no way that Keith saying his name for the first time should absolutely  _ stick  _ to him like that. The force of it catches Lance off guard and he feels unsteady for just a moment as the drop of blood slowly begins to slide down Keith’s wrist. “I always make sure we’re alone.”

Heat rises to the surface of Lance’s skin and he masks it with a scowl of his own. “Well, you could have fooled me. Even idiots know when to quit.”

“Shut up.” He extends his arm towards the ground and the blood slips from the always open wound on his arm. As much as he hates what comes after, watching Keith form his weapon with his blood is nothing short of mesmerizing. It’s hot and liquid until it’s not. Shiny and hard and painfully sharp in Keith’s hand. 

Lance looks up from the blade to find Keith staring at him again. “I’ve never heard of anyone else being able to do that,” he says. It slips out without a filter, but he is curious, especially since Pidge won’t tell him what the deal is. 

Keith spins the sword in his hand easily. “I’m the only one.”

Lance goes rigid at that. “I’m...I’m sorry,” he says, realizing as soon as the words leave his mouth, that he means them. When you’re one of a kind it messes with your head, especially in a world where differences are so harshly judged. Lance knows that better than anyone. It makes the days harder to face, makes the nights too long and too dark and too empty. 

Keith’s expression becomes unreadable, gripping his sword tightly at his side. “Can we just fight?”

Lance holds his gaze for a moment, and he doesn’t know if it’s the sunset or what, but he swears that Keith looks less sharp. His edges aren’t so jagged, his dark clothes are too big for him, and he just looks like a teenage kid who has put up with a lot of shit in his life. Lance hates seeing him like this, because he knows that the guy is gonna try to kill him yet tonight. Because Pidge had given him a warning directly from Shiro herself about getting too close.

Leave it to Lance to start feeling sympathy for his would-be killer. He’s an idiot.

“Fine,” he sighs. “But first, you have to answer one question.”

Keith holds his sword out in front of him. “No.”

Lance is actually prepared this time - days of this same routine have trained his muscles and analyzed Keith’s movements enough that he’s getting the hang of it - and is able to slip out of the way of Keith’s blade when he lunges toward him. He feels adrenaline hot in his blood as he pushes himself down the hallway, pumping his arms as he runs full-speed for the window in the stairwell. He doesn’t stop as he collides against the wall and slams the window open, his panic mounting when he hears footsteps closing in behind him.

He barely manages to fling himself into the bushes to escape the sword that comes whistling towards him. Lance laughs as he scrambles to his feet and makes his way towards the back entrance on campus, unable to help but feel giddy for evading.

“Missed me! Your aim sucks!” he calls back over his shoulder as Keith jumps out the window in a much more graceful way.

“Wanna tell that to my face?” Keith yells back with a strong dose of annoyance, scooping up his blade and racing after him.

Lance throws himself into the double doors when he reaches them and once inside, finds a very specific classroom with a nook that could conceal him well enough. He wedges himself into the space between two cabinets and waits, holding his breath, willing his heart to calm down.

Footsteps.

Keith is quicker than Lance expected, and soon he’s no longer alone in the room.

“I know you’re in here,” Keith murmurs, sword at the ready. “I can feel you.” 

Lance is horrified to find that he’s blushing again. Obviously, spirit hunters have an innate ability to sniff out  _ youmu _ , but Keith’s brand of honesty rattles him, especially for a guy who only speaks with the bare minimum. Lance takes a silent, shallow breath, pressing himself further into the shadows to avoid being seen.

Keith slowly makes his way around the room, peeking under the desk and opening the closet doors on the far wall. Finally, he makes his way towards Lance’s hiding spot and when his back is turned, Lance lunges out, knocking Keith to the ground from behind, effectively stealing the breath from both of them. 

“Fuck!” Keith gasps, wriggling as Lance rights himself enough, dragging in labored breaths while pushing a knee into Keith’s back. “Get off of me!”

Lance laughs bitterly, grabbing his wrists and pinning them to the floor. He bangs Keith’s sword hand against the linoleum until he hisses and drops the weapon. “You’re weak as shit.” Take that, Kogane. Lance isn’t a fighter by any means, but he’d taken some basic self-defense lessons before he’d been taken under Shiro’s protection. It feels good to have a use for them, to finally get the leg up on this guy.

“I have anemia, you dumbass,” Keith snaps, still breathless. Lance looks down to see blood smeared against the floor where Keith’s open wound had rubbed. He swallows down the guilt and shifts, trying for a stronger grip. He shouldn’t feel guilty - it’s Keith’s own fault that he’s expends so much energy trying to, oh yeah, kill people.

Keith jerks and Lance swears, seeing stars when his knee slips off Keith’s back and the body beneath him twists, allowing a fist to crack loudly against his jaw. Lance growls, sounding a little less than human, blood in his mouth. He regains the upper hand by pinning Keith’s biceps to the floor by his elbows and sneering down at the boy beneath him.

“Why are you  _ obsessed _ with me?” Lance demands, breathing harshly through his nose. The tang of Keith’s blood mingles in the air with another, stronger scent that he hadn’t noticed before. It’s dark and almost tastes like cinnamon on his tongue. He stamps down on the realization that his  _ youmu _ half has scented Keith out now that they’re touching in close quarters. He grimaces uncomfortably; he hates it when his human half isn’t strong enough to chase away  _ youmu _ tendencies.

Keith grits his teeth, but says nothing, the darkness of his gaze blistering with his resolve.

“Answer me!” Lance’s grip tightens to what he imagines is a painful degree, bruising, trying to ignore the cloying smell of Keith and blood in his mouth. “I mind my own business, I stay in my own lane. What the fuck is your deal? You show up out of nowhere to kill me, but you don’t even know what I am?”

Keith struggles against the weight for another moment and then goes limp, but Lance refuses to let up. He’s not going to fall for that one. “You’re  _ youmu _ ,” Keith spits angrily. “Why do I need more reason than that?”

Lance glares at him. “Nice try, but I don’t buy it.”

“Get off!”

“Not until I get some answers!”

Keith snarls, but the sound is drowned out by the deafening roar of something not quite human. Lance tenses and looks up in time to see a large creature shatter the classroom window. Glass goes flying, the dust of it settling into Keith’s hair as they both flinch. Lance freezes as his heart leaps into his throat, swearing under his breath.

Keith rolls into action immediately upon the distraction, shoving Lance off of him with more strength than previously capable. Lance hisses as the broken pieces of glass bury into his skin but he yanks them out quickly and the wounds are already healed. Keith sprawls forward to grab his sword and then launches himself to his feet, as the creature takes a deep breath and focuses its attention on him. Apparently, Lance wasn’t the only one who could smell him.

“ _ Youmu _ .” Keith says it like a swear word as the creature, covered in hair and multiple eyes, long limbs with strange joints, crawls into the classroom. Lance watches in utter disbelief as the thing rises up to its full height. He’s never seen one this big before, and definitely not this deep into the city. Didn’t Matt have barriers up to protect the school district from this type of thing anyway? What the hell is it doing here? Is Keith’s power so big that it can attract _ youmu _ of this size in barriered zones?

Lance finds himself pressing his back up against the wall and Keith clenches his hand tightly around his sword. Even though he’d leapt to his feet with sureness, Lance doesn’t miss the way that Keith sways slightly, unsteady.

“Dude, maybe we should run?” Lance suggests, voice cracking as the  _ youmu _ blinks down and bares its teeth. His self-defense lessons hadn’t prepared him for encounters like this, really.

Keith says nothing, only readies his sword with a flick of his wrist and a widened stance. His entire body coils in tightly, all muscles tensed and ready to strike and Lance stares because he doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything so fierce or powerful and a shiver trembles through him. This is the same boy who has tried over and over to kill him, but Lance is sure that Keith had never looked like this in those attempts; he’d have remembered. He’d have been more afraid.

Before Keith launches into action, however, there’s a sound of confusion and a blur of movement from the door, and then the creature is screaming with pain, cowering, and climbing back out of the broken window with more speed than a thing that size should have.

“I should have known you’d be in the middle of this, Lance.”

Lance breathes a sigh of relief, sagging against the wall, Keith turning to look with incredulity at the tall man now standing where the creature had been, adjusting his glasses as he rolls up a sleeve. He doesn’t have a singular hair out of place, looking hardly bothered by the scene he’d just stumbled upon other than his surface confusion. His gaze passes over Keith very briefly before fixing Lance with a raised eyebrow.

Lance gives a thumbs up. “You know me; always in the wrong place, at the wrong time.”

The man sighs, but he looks more amused than anything. “Hardly. You’re just a trouble-magnet. Call the cleaners for me, yeah?”

Lance nods, pushing away from the wall, already digging his phone out of his back pocket. He knows that’s pretty much an order and not a request. “Yeah, okay.”

“Thank you!” The man gives Keith one last, unreadable look and then he’s gone in another quick blur.

“What the hell just happened?” Keith asks gruffly, as though he didn’t want to ask, but his curiosity got the better of him. He turns back to look at Lance who is quickly typing out an email to Shiro’s damage control team to tell them about the ruined classroom. 

Without looking up, he answers. “Adam Warren. He’s a math teacher here, but he’s also a badass spirit hunter. Super quick, big punches. He’s kind of famous around here, I guess? I hadn’t really heard about him until I transferred into the city either, though.” He hits send and shoves his phone back into his pocket before meeting Keith’s gaze. “New topic: can we call a truce for tonight?”

Keith is leaning against the wall, his sword having already been absorbed back into his body when Lance wasn’t paying attention. He stares down with heavy eyes as he pulls his bandage from his pocket and begins to wrap his arm up with shaky hands, clearly an answer to Lance’s question, avoiding all eye contact purposefully.

Lance stares very hard at him, his stomach growling to remind him that it’s past his dinner time and that it’s getting late. The sky has started to turn ruby red, closer to twilight now, the sun saying goodbye for now with a final flare of color. It presses against his skin like a hug, gentle and warm, the air hanging around them void of all previous hostility. He can still taste Keith’s cinnamon scent, can still smell his blood.

He hears Pidge’s warning in his head, and he knows that Keith has done literally nothing to warrant any kindness at all, but in the red light of the sunset, the shadows on his face look heavy and haunting. The guy is a mess; hair mussed, clothes rumpled, covered in glass dust. His eyes are so dark they are entirely void of any light and for the first time, Lance notices that Keith is actually shorter than him.

And maybe it’s the hunger and exhaustion talking. Maybe it’s the way Keith takes a deep breath and runs a hand over his face. Maybe it’s the way his normally pissed off expression has fallen away to reveal a kind of fatigue that goes bone-deep, the kind that comes from night terrors and staring contests with the ceiling at 3am. Maybe there’s no reason at all, but...right now, he doesn’t hate Keith. Not by a long shot.

He licks his lips and cards his fingers through his hair, settling them at the nape of his neck as he looks to Keith sheepishly. “Are you hungry?”

Keith jerks like he’d been electrocuted, like Lance had just screamed the words in his ear instead of murmuring them, made soft by his sudden realization. He looks up with wild eyes. “What?”

“Are you hungry?” Lance repeats it patiently and props his hands on his hips. “You look two seconds from passing out. Did you even eat anything today?”

Keith eyes him with a nasty look on his face. “What’s it to you?”

He chuckles and holds his hands up in surrender. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, cool your jets, mullet. It’s not like _ I _ want to kill  _ you _ .” He finds himself smirking when Keith rolls his eyes. “There’s a diner that makes the best burgers in town a couple blocks over and I’m gonna go get a bite. Wanna make sure I’m not planning on assaulting some innocent people or whatever it is you think I do around here?”

Keith frowns. “Are you?”

Lance hums cheerfully. “Guess you’ll have to find out.” 

:

:

Keith is Really Fucking Confused.

If there is a limit to be met on the amount of confusion a person can experience, Keith thinks that he has exceeded it easily in the past two hours.

His food lies untouched in front of him and he stares at it - well, he glares at it - so that he doesn’t end up watching the boy sitting across from him with as much intensity as he feels in body. Physically, he’s tired, but his mind is racing a mile a minute, muscles tight as an iron wire, trying to figure out how he landed himself in this situation. His nerves feel exposed and prickly. Never in a thousand years had he pictured himself sitting across the table at a restaurant with a person who had been made his mark.

“Is somethin’ wrong with the food?”

Keith tenses at the sound of Lance’s harmless inquiry. 

“You should eat. You’ll feel better.”

Slowly, he raises his head to see Lance holding a double cheeseburger with both hands, peering over the sandwich to gauge Keith’s expression. This is fucked up in so many ways. That boy is too pretty to be looking at him like that, all warm skin and kind eyes, too pretty to be on a death row of Keith’s making. Especially when Keith can feel his presence pressing against him like a second skin, an undeniable touch,  _ youmu _ and not. It’s not a taste or a smell, but he can’t shake the certainty that Lance  _ feels _ like sea salt and the quiet hour after midnight when the stars are at their brightest. 

He should not be here; this is bad. This is very, very, very,  _ very bad _ .

He grunts at Lance, and starts shoveling his French fries into his mouth.

Lance grins, “That’s more like it!” and then takes another bite of his burger.

Keith eats quickly, messily, because he is really hungry but also because he needs to get out of here as soon as possible. Trailing after Lance to this cute little diner on the corner of a shopping district was really on a list of the worst ideas Keith has ever had.

“So...how long have you been fighting for?”

Keith pretends not to hear him, reaching for his soda and taking a long, long drink from it, casting his eyes around the red and white interior of the restaurant. He doesn’t know why Lance would want to know that information, anyway. It’s not like it would change anything, or that it would benefit him in some way. Keith bites the straw absently, full strength returning to him now that he’s eaten something. 

“Hey, stop ignoring me,” Lance whines. “I’m paying for your food, the least you can do is answer my questions.”

Keith sets his glass aside and levels Lance with a look that feels strange on his own face, raising an eyebrow for emphasis. “Is that a bribe?”

“I dunno. Is it a bribe if I already offered without asking for anything in exchange?” Lance pauses. “Is it working?”

This guy is an idiot. “Obviously not.”

Lance frowns and takes a huge bite of his sandwich, finishing it off. Keith picks the tomatoes and lettuce off of his burger and slathers the bun in extra ketchup before raising it to his mouth. He can’t remember the last time he went out to eat; he prefers to stay at home and cook just because being out in public makes him feel uneasy. He spent most of his childhood isolated from a majority of the world, so crowds stress him out and give him headaches. Besides, people, even non-spirit world people, tend to know that there’s something wrong with him. 

It’s his blood. It’s potent. So thick with it’s curse that he can’t even get animals to come within a five foot radius of him. Gives off danger vibes, turns people away. Keith is used to it, so eating out with another person in a restaurant is out of his comfort zone and it’s made 100 times more baffling by the fact that this person across from him is his  _ mark _ . Lance should be dead by now and Keith should be literally anywhere else in the world but here, yet...

The burger is as good as Lance promised it would be and Keith enjoys it more than he should.

“You really don’t like talking about yourself, do you?” Lance says as he picks at his fries.

Keith absolutely does not like talking about himself. “I have nothing to say.”

Lance snorts. “See, I’m calling bullshit. You’re like a full blown Nancy Drew mystery front to back and I’m naturally curious, okay. I’ll get it out of you eventually. If you think  _ you’re _ persistent, think again, stabby pants. I’ll have you beat there, and I can be  _ super _ annoying. Like...it’s not a threat, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

There’s...a lot to unpack there but Keith blinks at him and keeps it simple. “Who is Nancy Drew?” 

Lance stares at him for a moment with a blank expression before tossing his head back in a round of obnoxious laughter. Keith furrows his eyebrows and wonders if he should be offended, and he’s kind of irritated that he isn’t. He finishes off his burger while Lance is lost in his amusement.

“No one,” Lance chuckles, managing to get a hold of himself, a grin nearly splitting his face in half. “She’s no one, just a fictional character.”

Is it warm in here? Usually Keith’s anemia guarantees that he’ll be cold no matter where he goes, but Lance is smiling at him like that and it’s suddenly really, uncomfortably hot. He resists the urge to scowl and unzips the front of his hoodie, reaching for his soda again. The glass is wet and cold against his fingers. Lance is content to finish up his meal in silence, still smiling like somehow Keith’s cluelessness won him the lottery.

“I learned to fight when I was five,” Keith says abruptly, watching as Lance freezes and turns a curious gaze on him. Keith clears his throat and plays with the straw in his drink. He feels incredibly awkward and incredibly stupid for saying anything, especially with that wide-eyed look that Lance is wearing now, but he doesn’t take it back. He just looks away and clinks the ice in his glass, lips pressed together so he won’t say anything else.

“Why so young?” Lance’s voice is gentle and Keith hates it.

“Doesn’t matter why,” he says, even though it does. “You asked and I answered.”

From his periphery, he sees Lance shake his head, and then sigh. “Well...five year olds shouldn’t be playing with knives at all, let alone knives made from their own blood, so...so whatever you’ve been through, it sucks. That’s all I meant.”

His heart seizes briefly in his chest and he doesn’t know what to make of it, doesn’t want to feel like that again. Oh, Christ, this is bad. A huge mistake. Fuck everything, Keith feels himself softening at the sincerity in Lance’s voice and he resists it by scowling, by remembering all the kindnesses before that had turned into weapons against Keith. He is here for one reason, and that is to finish his job and get the hell out. 

Keith growls and pushes away from the table, looking down to see that Lance is watching him with confusion. He  _ hates _ it. There’s no way a person who is involved with the spirit world can be that genuine; they never are. And he is a  _ youmu _ , a creature that takes pleasure in possessing or killing people, a creature that can start wars and spread disease and foster unparalleled hatred in human hearts. Trusting him at all at face value is something only a moron would do, right? So why the fuck does it feel like he’s grasping at straws to make himself feel better for his disdain?

“Tomorrow will be no different,” Keith says harshly, pissed at the muddiness in his head, wishing he could claw all of the thoughts out of his head and never think them again.

Lance snorts, but has the gall to look amused. “What if I buy you more food?”

Without saying another word, he spins on his heel and makes towards the doors of the diner.

“Hey! You’re welcome for dinner, asshole!”

He sticks his middle finger in the air without turning around and pushes his way out into the night, shouldering away from the people walking down the sidewalk. The cool autumn air that rushes in helps to clear his head and makes him feel even stupider for allowing himself to sit down and eat dinner with a boy who should be dead.

Keith glares at the concrete beneath his feet as he re-zips his hoodie and shoves his hands deep into the pockets. It’s so chilly. Cold is good. Cold won’t let him think. He chooses to make the long walk back to his apartment building instead of taking the bus as punishment for his blatant stupidity. By the time he reaches the front door, every inch of him is frozen through.

His hand shakes as he unlocks the door and steps inside, making his way stiffly up the stairs to his shitty apartment on the top floor. Once there, he marches straight to the shower to warm up. The water is a slow, gentle relief as it unthaws him and he’s grateful when the only thing on his mind is how good it feels.

The water eventually begins to lose its heat and he has to step out, frantically trying to keep his mind blank. He changes into fresh clothes and bandages up his arm with a new roll of gauze slowly. He can hear his phone vibrating from where he’d left it this morning on his bedside table and, unable to avoid it anymore, he sighs and makes his way into his bedroom.

There are two text messages, demanding a progress report. Keith has never taken this long to finish a job before and he knows he should reply, but he simply deletes the messages and throws his phone on the bed. Out of sight, out of mind.

He really doesn’t want to think about it right now, because if he does, he’ll keep....

He’ll keep thinking about how Lance is  _ half human _ . 

No matter how hard he tries to forget it, he can’t. He fucking  _ can’t. _

He’ll think about how horrified he felt when he found out, how he’d almost been sick right then and there, how he understood why his  _ youmu _ aura felt so goddamn different from every other creature he’s ever stumbled upon. He’ll think about the unexpected kindness Lance has extended towards him, despite everything Keith has done to try and kill him. How understanding his eyes had been, even when Keith thinks that he can’t possibly understand anything.

He can’t think about it. His confusion and his own self-hatred will swallow him whole and drive him mad.

So instead, he crawls under the covers and stares at the wall, humming a lullaby from a long forgotten memory, until he falls asleep.

  
  
  



	2. Truce?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Shiro attempts to keep the peace, Lance does some bloody research, and Keith hates literally everything

Keith isn’t at school the next day.

Lance knows, reasonably, that he should be happy that there is no one lurking around in the shadows waiting to stab him. And like, he is, but also....

...he can’t stop wondering where Keith is?

Which is alarming, honestly, on so many levels because why should he care? Keith Kogane is brash and prickly with a terrible, nasty, no good temperament and he also wants Lance dead. Like, the very ferocity with which he wants Lance dead is crystal clear. None of those things should win him any favors at all. 

Except that Lance isn’t thinking about those things, when he thinks about Keith.

Lance is thinking about the way Keith prepared to fight off an opponent that was much bigger than him, easily and confidently and with an intensity that rolled off of him in thick plumes. Like it was smoke and he was a wildfire. He’d sunk into the readiness with such ingrained familiarity, those dark eyes of his burning, the purple shadows under his eyes stark against his pale skin.

He’s thinking about Keith’s ignorance to a common pop culture reference, the undeniably ruffled look on his face when Lance had laughed at him. For the first time, he hadn’t been so sour, hadn’t been so guarded. In that moment, Lance hadn’t seen Keith as anything but another awkward teenager who was kinda clueless. It was so mundane and refreshing.

He’s thinking about the way Keith’s expression had closed up upon admitting that he’s been fighting since he was five years old and Lance is certain that his fighting has nothing to do with rough-housing against siblings or slapping around a kid on the playground. It had made a weight settle uncomfortably against him at that shadowed look on Keith’s face. He’d hated, immediately, whatever had made a junior in high school look like  _ that _ .

He finds himself looking through the throng of students during passing periods all morning - for a glimpse of dark hair or dark, dark clothes - and by the time he is sitting down at an empty table in the cafeteria for lunch, he’s come to admit to himself that he’s probably a masochist. Like, genuinely. There’s not really any other explanation for this.

“Shiro says you got into big trouble yesterday while I was gone.”

Adam must have tattled on him. Lance doesn’t even try to hide his heaving, exasperated sigh before looking up at Pidge who stands there with a lunch tray in her hands, Hunk to her left. He elects to ignore her in favor for smiling at Hunk, who is offering up a sympathetic expression, and it immediately puts him a little more at ease. 

“Hey, dude. Haven’t seen you in a while,” he says as both of them plop down at the table across from him.

“Yeah, club has been keeping me busy after school,” Hunk offers up easily, his presence like a balm on Lance’s frayed nerves.

Hunk is so easy-going and so genuine that Lance can almost forget that Hunk knows exactly who he is. It had taken some time for Hunk to learn to not be afraid, but after - when he realized that Lance was just a regular dude who had been dealt a shitty hand of cards - he opened up a hell of a lot. Lance tentatively calls him a friend in his own head, but he knows better than to try and over-extend when the people he is surrounded by think of themselves as babysitters first, colleagues second, and acquaintances third. The word friend isn’t even in their vocabulary.

“He’s all caught up on your drama, so don’t think you can use him as an excuse to avoid me,” Pidge complains, but there’s something off about the way she talks. Either she’s had too many cups of coffee already today or she’s genuinely upset about something. “Did you not listen to me when I told you to leave Kogane alone?”

Lance keeps his voice even. “The guy is after  _ me _ , Pidge. Cut me some slack.”

“Yeah...I’m gonna have to side with Lance on this one,” Hunk cuts in generously as he begins to eat. “This Kogane guy sounds a little crazy. I mean, Lance is the victim here, right? Getting chased over and over and murdered multiple times a week. Yikes, dude.”

Pidge nudges him with her elbow. “Could you say that  _ any _ louder?”

“C’mon, no one is even looking on our direction right now. Your paranoia knows no bounds these days.”

“Well, I have one perfectly good reason for that.” She frowns and juts her finger in Lance’s direction. He keeps his expression carefully blank as the soul-crushing guilt he’s so acquainted with threatens to swell up and incapacitate him. _Hello darkness my old friend…_ that inconsolable asshole of a consciousness. He meets her gaze for a split second and then she drops her finger, and an uncomfortable tension fills the air. Hunk shifts uneasily, sensing the change, and Lance wonders if it would be worse to stay or to run away.

She’s definitely upset about something.

As it is, he looks away, leaning on the table with his chin cupped in the palm of his hand. “Keith is not my fault.”

Hunk remains silent, opting to eat instead of inserting himself into the conversation again and Lance kinda feels bad for him. He wasn’t there last year when...when The Incident happened. He only knew the stories, the aftermath, and then that god awful tension between Lance and the Holt siblings. And as the only other member under the jurisdiction of the Shirogane clan in high school, he often has a front row seat for this sorta thing.

Lance can feel Pidge staring at him but he just pushes the food around on his tray, his appetite entirely gone. “You’re…” she sighs. “You’re still going to be involved with him, aren’t you?” There is still a threat in there, he thinks. Somewhere. This thing with Keith must really be stressing her out because there is a weight to her words that he hasn’t felt in months.

He tips his face to look at her briefly, the sick feeling in his stomach continuing to roll through him. “I guess it’s up to him.” He wants to say more than that. Wants to claim that he made a breakthrough with mullet head yesterday, but he doesn’t know if it’s true. Keith had promised that their dynamic would resume again today, but he’s not here and Lance doesn’t know what that means.

She watches him for a moment and then nods. “Whatever.” She falls into conversation with Hunk then, about some science project she has to put together for her college course but Lance tunes them out. He can feel Hunk glancing at him every now and then, and Pidge’s blatant...well, it’s not anger, but she doesn’t plan to placate him either, which he deserves. 

He thinks it means that she must have talked to Matt yesterday. Pidge is always more prickly around him after she talks to Matt. They probably talked about Keith, because he’s been an issue, and it probably lead to Lance, who is also an issue. They probably remembered what had happened the last time someone tried to _ really _ kill Lance. The Incident.

He can’t stop wondering if she’s afraid that Keith’s persistence will bring about another repeat of last year. 

It makes Lance wish he were dead.

Makes him wish he  _ could  _ die.

Maybe he should just...just--

Lance excuses himself quietly as the nausea licks at him. Hunk looks as though he wants to say something, but he is good at knowing how to pick his battles and purses his mouth instead. Pidge shrugs, offers up a snarky little comment, but doesn’t bother to meet Lance’s eyes. So, he walks away, discards his mostly untouched lunch, and leaves the cafeteria to find a less crowded place to wait out the rest of the hour.

There’s a spot under a tree in the grassy lawn between the school and the track field that is unoccupied, so Lance makes his way over and sits with his back to the rough bark. His chest is tight, his throat sore with emotion, and he swallows back the urge to cry painfully by pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes.

:

:

The knock at his apartment door at 7am really throws Keith for a loop, causing him to jump, and instantly he’s on guard. He thumbs the bandage on his arm when he goes to look through the peephole, prepared to pull it loose in seconds so he can have access to his blood. The stranger on the other side of the door is wearing a button-up shirt and dark slacks, appearing at ease, even as he checks his wrist watch idly.

Yeah, who the fuck is his guy? No one who looks like that should be calling on Keith, even though he definitely has the presence of a spirit hunter. Keith can feel it pressing against his skin. It’s a light, airy feeling, almost soothing.

“You’ve got the wrong place,” he says through the door, watching with critical eyes as the man shifts on his feet. Apprehension shivers through him, and he wonders if he should allow that little bit of fear nettling him to launch him into a fight or flight plan. He didn’t answer the texts last night from his employer, so it’s possible that this guy is here to collect.

Except this guy looks calm and collected and he’s wearing shoes that he clearly doesn’t intend to run in so...so maybe not.

“I’m sorry--I’m looking for Keith Kogane? Doesn’t he live in his building?”

Keith unravels the bandage and forms a dagger in his hand, tucking it halfway behind his back. “Who wants to know?” 

“My name is Shiro,” the man responds, perhaps realizing he’s at the right place after all. Keith watches as he leans one hand against the door jamb and pockets the other, looking entirely comfortable. He’s not in any rush at all, even though Keith should be at his bus stop in 15 minutes if he wants to get to school on time. “I just want to talk to him.”

Keith hesitates for a long time before he grits his teeth together in a snarl and yanks the door open, holding his dagger out in front of him in a warning. 

The man - Shiro - blinks at him in surprise and then he smiles. Keith nearly drops his knife in reply because who the hell smiles with a weapon aimed for their throat?

“Can I come in?” Shiro asks politely as he leans back, pocketing his other hand.

Keith stares, tightening his grip on his dagger. “What do you want from me?”

Shiro looks behind him at the other doors on this floor, before nodding towards the empty interior of Keith’s apartment. There’s something very stern about his expression without being intimidating or too intense and Keith doesn’t fucking like it. It’s not gentle but it could be. He’s immediately reminded of Lance, with his sincerity, and Keith  _ doesn’t like it _ .

Keith steps back, keeping his weapon poised, allowing Shiro to enter before he kicks the door closed and puts more space between them. He remains wary, his hackles raised as he waits for an attack, but there is no animosity in the air around Shiro. “What the hell do you want from me?”

Shiro slowly examines the bare apartment - a studio with a crappy resale mattress and a cheap night stand as the only furniture - and then turns his gaze to the crimson blade in Keith’s hand with vague interest. He looks up and meets Keith’s antagonistic glare. “I’m here to talk to you about Lance McClain. I’ve heard you’ve taken an interest in him.”

Heat rushes into Keith’s face like a tidal wave, burning up his neck all the way to the tips of his ears, and he tenses, his knuckles turning white as he grips his weapon. An interest? Terrible choice of words. He has no interest in what happens to Lance because Lance is  _ youmu _ .  _ Half-human _ , another part of his brain unhelpfully supplies.  _ Half-human. _

“I don’t,” he says dangerously, spitting the words out with more force than necessary.

“You’ve tried to kill him, and that’s an issue for me, because he’s under my protection,” Shiro says conversationally, unruffled. He pauses a moment, and then, “You’ve been hired to kill him.” There is no question there; it’s a statement. 

Keith sneers, taking another step back. “What gave me away?”

Shiro looks amused by that, despite Keith’s nasty tone. “Just a feeling I had,” he replies cleverly. “You aren’t the first. I’d like you to stop hunting Lance, if you’ll please. He’s dangerous.”

Keith feels confusion creeping in on him. “Isn’t that more reason to kill him?”

Shiro sighs and shifts his weight. “I’m sure you’ve noticed that he doesn’t die easily.”

Keith says nothing.

“There’s more to his immortality than meets the eye,” Shiro elaborates, and although his open expression has not changed, Keith can hear the uneasy shift in his voice. “Lance is...well, he’s a nice kid. Wouldn’t hurt a fly if he could help it, but the thing is that, sometimes he  _ can’t _ help it. For your safety, and the safety of everyone here, I need you to desist with your orders to kill.” 

Keith doesn’t know what to make of that. It sounds so fucking ominous especially because he’s been so up close and personal with Lance, who very much prefers to avoid conflict. He lowers his dagger, uncomfortable with disarming himself but knowing now that Shiro doesn’t mean him any harm. There isn’t even a threatening tone in his request for Keith to stop hunting Lance; he’s just genuinely asking Keith to step away.

It’s so different from the authority that he’s used to that he feels out of place and backed into a corner at the same time.

“I can’t,” Keith says, but the defensive tone in his voice has been sapped away by Shiro’s gentle approach on this subject. Keith knows that he shouldn’t be giving anything away about his employers - for all the jobs he’s had, all the youmu he’s been tasked with killing, he’s never once slipped up details on them when confronted by spirit hunters in his hunting grounds. Him relenting even the smallest bits of info to a guy he met just five minutes ago seems like the worst thing he could possibly do in this situation. He realizes that  _ I can’t _ means that it’s not his choice, not really, and it’s true. It never was.

Shiro looks at him with curiosity instead of anger at Keith’s dismissal. “Why not? I’ll pay you, if it’s losing the money you’re worried about.”

Keith reabsorbs his blood back into his body and presses his thumb against the tiny, open wound on his arm. He grits his teeth and looks down at the shitty carpet under his boots. “It’s not about money,” he says in a low voice. “I just can’t.”

_ Half-human _ , he remembers out of nowhere, and a tremble threatens to shake his hands.

There’s an unbearably long silence, as though Shiro is working through his own thoughts and Keith waits for his anger, his retaliation, muscles tensed. When Shiro finally speaks, he can hear the frown in Shiro’s voice, and Keith is startled by how even and calm it is. “Well...at least consider it,” he says. 

Keith hesitates and then nods, but it feels like a lie, because he honestly, well and truly, can’t. 

Shiro stares at him for a moment longer and then slides a card out of his pocket and extends it towards Keith. “This is my number,” he says as Keith looks up in confusion, staring at his outstretched hand.

“Why?” Keith asks, fixing his wary gaze upwards.

Shiro’s lips twitch at the corners and his eyes are kind. Keith briefly thinks that he should have never let this man into his apartment, because he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know what this means and he doesn’t like how it makes him feel and it’s freaking him out. “I want you to have it in case you need anything,” Shiro says, and it’s so matter-of-fact that Keith takes the card from him and shoves it into the pocket of his sweatshirt.

But Keith is still confused beyond belief, and his apprehension grows. This guy showed up and asked Keith to stop doing something important, and even though Keith refused, he’s still going to be nice? It doesn’t make sense to Keith, or line up with what he knows about spirit hunters at all. He wants to run, or fight, or something. Something that he’s familiar with. Anything but this--this  _ kindness _ that he does not trust and does not deserve.

Shiro nods, pleased. “I’ll head out now.” He reaches for the door, pauses, and looks back at Keith. “I’m serious, Keith. If you need anything at all, please call me.”

Keith doesn’t say anything, because he has nothing to say. His mind is too muddled, full of unmatchable bewilderment and he clenches his hands into fists at his side as he watches Shiro offer up another smile before disappearing out the door.

What...What the hell just happened?

Hands shaking, Keith re-wraps his open cut and once he’s sure that Shiro is gone, he leaves, barely pausing to lock his apartment door before running down the stairs. Outside, he turns his back on the bus stop, where he’d wait for the vehicle to take him to school, and instead finds himself sprinting up the street in the opposite direction.

There’s no way he can sit in a classroom for 8 hours today. He needs to move, to run, to breathe in open air and pretend like he has some sort of grip on whatever the hell his life is quickly becoming. Who the fuck does this Shiro guy think he is? Clearly upset with Keith’s extracurriculars, but unwilling to take action against him. Treating him kindly despite it. How can Keith trust that? And why the hell did he give Keith his number? Why would Keith ever, in any universe, need to call on him?

And anyway, going to school would mean seeing Lance. Lance, who bought Keith dinner and smiled at him like they weren’t enemies in any way, shape or form. Lance, who pried at Keith with questions that Keith has never had to answer, doesn’t want to answer anyway, because they fucking hurt to think about. Lance, who is  _ youmu _ . Dangerous and yet...not. Half-human.  _ Half-human. _

Keith follows the pulses in the air that lead him to small fry  _ youmu _ hiding in the conservatory on the outskirts of town. He’s not thinking as he kills the small creatures, not bothering to pocket the stones they leave behind. His mind is blank, red and blue, anger and sadness, and nothing and everything and it's all too much. There is only one thought that comes to him, comes quick and frequent before disappearing again in his desperation to forget.

He wishes Lance had died the first time Keith stabbed him, because then Keith wouldn’t be feeling so fucking lost.

:

:

Lance comes to the conclusion that in order to ease Pidge’s worries about Keith, he’ll just have to make it so that Keith doesn’t want him dead. 

Easier said than done, for sure, but Lance views this as a challenge and a project of its own and truthfully, it’ll be nice to focus on something other than how much his life just straight up sucks. It’ll suck less if he doesn’t have to worry about daily attempted murder, and besides, after having dinner with Keith the other day, Lance thinks the job won’t be impossible.

After school, Lance cuts the usual study hour with Pidge and makes his way back to his apartment in order to do what he’d been too pissy to do at first: some major research on Keith Kogane. Pidge knows exactly who he is, and Lance knows he’s heard the name Kogane before, but he doesn’t know what it means. So, that’s a good place to start.

He logs into the database through his laptop, grateful that Shiro had given him access to it months ago when he first got curious about Spirit World mumbo jumbo. It gave him something to do over the summer when he didn’t have friends or school work to distract himself with, and even though he’s got a short attention span, it certainly helped him beef up on Shiro’s clan’s history. It made him feel a little more at ease in a world that, essentially, hated him.

Once he’s on the homepage of the website, he types _ Kogane  _ into the search bar and drums his fingers against his knee while the page loads. His wifi is shit in his apartment, a product of mooching off the neighbor’s guest hotspot, but he doesn’t have the funds for anything other than rent and groceries. He’s learned to be patient with it, most of the time.

Eventually, the search loads and a short list of entries pops up. Lance clicks on the first entry, which explains the Kogane clan’s history in excruciating detail. His attention, much to his surprise, doesn’t even try to wander when he scrolls down from the introductory paragraphs. There’s still too much to devour in one sitting, so he skims for the important pieces that will give him a glimpse of the big picture that he’s working with.

 

_ Originating in Japan, the Kogane clan, also known as the Blood clan, quickly became known as the fiercest warriors in the Spirit World due to their strength, agility, and their power. Their ability to manipulate their own blood was seen as a gift from a god, and many worshipped them, believing that they would bring about peace in a world so often torn apart by greed and discord. _

_ Over time, the Blood clan became the Knights of the Council and dominated in the eternal battle against  _ youmu _. The Spirit World Council relied heavily on them for protection, both from extremely dangerous  _ youmu _ who would actively hunt out spirit hunters and other clans who opposed the Council. _

 

Lance stares at that last bit in shock. He knew that it was common in history for clans to go to war with each other, but...to employ a clan to fight off whoever didn’t like the power structure of the Council? Seems real sketchy. Gives Lance a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach as he clicks out of that page and goes to the second entry. 

The page takes forever to load there is the irritated itch of impatience as he ponders over the kind of power struggles that must have taken place in the past. 

 

_ About 100 years ago, the Blood clan fell out of favor with the Spirit World Council when they collectively refused to carry out the Council’s orders. Having offended many clans in the years they spent directly serving the Council, the Blood clan quickly became the enemy of the largest and most powerful clans, as well as the target of more than a few assassination attempts. _

_ The awe that they had inspired turned into bitter disdain and fear. Because their power was so unique and terrible, and because their loyalties had never been easy to discern, most clans began to believe that their blood was demon-touched. They were ejected from most of society and made out to be monsters among even _ youmu _. _

_ Eventually, the size of the Blood clan dwindled, and those who still existed after the incessant deaths went into hiding to avoid the conflict. Most of them left Japan in the hopes of finding a safer place to live. _

 

Demon-touched. Lance feels sick to his stomach, and clicks out of this link so that he’s back at the search page. There is two entries left, and the second to last is a short notice dated back just 15 years. 

It is only his desire to understand Keith further that forces him to click on it. 15 years ago wasn’t that long - it existed well within his own lifetime, so that means it happened after Keith was born, too. He knows exactly what it is before the page even loads, remembers with searing clarity, suddenly, why the name Kogane had been so familiar to him.

 

_ The last of the Blood clan has been eliminated.  Press release from the Spirit World Council to be posted within the week. Thank you for your cooperation. _

 

Lance closes his eyes and shuts his laptop without looking at what he assumes will be the press release. He draws his knees to his chest and buries his face in his crossed arms, wishing he’d never looked, that he hadn’t been right, that he hadn’t remembered.

His own distrust and dislike of the Council, who have made it very clear that he’s on thin ice, threatens to turn into dark, bitter anger. They just fucking slaughtered a whole group of people because of ancient bad blood between them and the Blood clan and the rest of the spirit world condoned it, allowed it. 

Fucking hell it’s no wonder Keith is such a prickly asshole. Somehow, he had slipped through the cracks, had been allowed to live. For what purpose? If the Kogane clan was so hated, if people were really so scared of them, then why is Keith still alive? Did he just get lucky? Did someone save him? He has too many questions, too many questions, and he doesn’t even know if Keith has the answers. Not that Keith has it in him to open up about shit like this.

And then...the horrified thought that Shiro’s clan stood by and let this happen crosses his mind. It doesn’t seem like Shiro, to let such a senseless act of violence happen right under his nose, but Lance has to remind himself that Shiro hadn’t been the leader 15 years ago either.

He takes a deep, trembling breath, trying to shut it all out. This is a mess. Definitely not the kind of information he needed to sleep on, on a Thursday night.

God, this sucks.

How is he going to look at Keith again? With this fresh in his head, he won’t even be angry about the stabbing or the slicing, because he thinks that Keith has every reason in the world to want a  _ youmu _ like him dead. Keith has every fucking reason in the world to be angry and pissy and Lance hates that he understands him, now, because it feels like something he’ll never be able to forget. He could be 80 years old and wrinkly and harboring a million regrets and he’ll still be thinking about the boy who uses his blood to fight back against a world that took everything from him.

Lance lifts his head up and opens his eyes, keeping his chin rested against his forearms as he looks down at his bed, eyebrows furrowed. All of his own selfish, petty insecurities from earlier today with Pidge pale in comparison to this information. He really needs to talk to Keith, for the sake of a truce, mostly, but also because Keith needs someone to talk to.

:

:

“I know you probably just want to take a stab at me again today - maybe two stabs since you weren’t here yesterday - but...but I think we should talk.”

Keith looks up to see Lance standing in front of the study hall door with his hands in the pockets of his green jacket. His own face is shadowed by the wall, making it easy to hide when he doesn’t bother to scowl and reject Lance vehemently, watching Lance’s expression as it remains open and unreadable.

He shouldn’t relent, but he’s thinking about what Shiro said yesterday. About how Lance isn’t what he seems, and about how Lance is half-human and he’s thinking, with tired clarity, that he’s fucking exhausted. That he is sick of living a life where he does what he’s told because that’s his only option. That the only way he can calm down is when he’s got his blade in his hand and he’s cutting living creatures to pieces with unfeeling ferocity. 

Keith’s bandaged arm twitches, but he doesn’t move. Lance’s unusual presence presses against his skin so thoroughly it’s like he’s standing not two inches away from him, despite being on the opposite side of the room.

“I have nothing to say to you,” Keith says quietly and he feels like he needs to run far, far away.

“Then let  _ me _ talk, mullet,” Lance replies firmly.

Keith purses his lips, and doesn’t respond.

“Cool,” Lance murmurs, taking his silence as agreement. “Let’s go get something to eat, yeah?”

“I thought you wanted to talk.” Keith’s stomach curls in on itself with apprehension, hating that Lance - who should not be trusted, who should not be genuine or kind or unafraid - is treating him like a normal person. The volume of his hatred for this kindness is so loud inside of his head that Keith hates himself, because Lance is making it impossible to do his job and because Keith had already decided that he wasn’t going to try and kill Lance tonight.

“Don’t be sassy, Kogane, I’m hungry,” Lance says as he adjusts his backpack strap and then begins walking down the hall. Keith hesitates, and then sighs with frustration when he allows himself to follow.

Lance walks for a long time and Keith follows just behind him as they leave the campus grounds and head downtown into the shopping district. Eventually, they end up at a bakery and Keith waits outside, watching the last rays of sunlight streaming into the sky behind a wall of clouds and crosses his arms over his chest.

Lance emerges from the bakery with a small white paper bag in his hand and then gestures to the park on the other side of the road. “There should be some benches over there. No one really goes into the park at night, so we shouldn’t have to worry about people hearing us.”

Keith raises an eyebrow. “How do I know you’re not trying to kill me now?”

Lance blinks. Stares. “Did you just make a joke or are you being serious? I can’t tell.”

Instead of responding, Keith glances quickly to make sure they’re clear of traffic and then starts walking across the street.

“Wait! No, seriously, mullet!” Lance jogs up to him as they step onto the sidewalk on the other side. “I  _ have _ to know if that was a joke. Please. My entire life depends on knowing whether or not you’re capable of human emotion, I’m begging you--”

Keith makes a sound that’s somewhere between a snort and a hiss. “A joke doesn’t have anything to do with human emotion,” he says, now following Lance’s lead as the taller boy trots down the sidewalk and then branches off into the park. 

“No, but it probably indicates whether or not you have a soul, at least,” Lance tells him as he finds a bench that is far enough away from the road, a grove of trees behind them and a wide, empty field in front of them. City lights frame the distant tops of trees on the other side as the sun entirely disappears and the stars begin to shine brighter.

Lance collapses onto the bench and drops his backpack on the ground beside him. “I’m just going to tell myself that you made a joke and live my best life with that knowledge,” he says casually, as if there isn’t anything else he wants to talk about other than the fact that Keith made a bad joke with his dry, low-key humor.

Keith stares down at Lance as he pulls the hood of his jacket up to cover his exposed neck and ears and then begins to unravel the folded top of the paper bag. Despite knowing that this is still as terrible an idea as it was earlier in the week, Keith finds himself feeling less guilty about indulging in his curiosity.

Lance pauses and looks up at him expectantly through the growing darkness. “You can sit down, too, you know.” He pats the empty space beside him.

Keith frowns and then takes a seat, making sure to keep enough distance for another person to comfortably sit between them. He leans against the backrest and crosses his arms over his chest, burying the chilly tips of his fingers into the bunched fabric at his elbows.

“Here.”

He looks over in muted surprise to see Lance holding out the white paper bag in his direction, his mouth already full with something that smells like cinnamon and apples.

“I didn’t know what you like, obviously, so I just got a bunch of things. The blueberry muffin is really good, or the cherry danish, if you like fruit. Otherwise, there’s some chocolate chip cookies in there, too.”

Keith stares at the bag for a moment and then looks up at Lance. “Why?”

Lance lowers the bag to the bench space between them. “Why what?”

“Why are you being so--.” He cuts off, biting down on his tongue. “You don’t have to feel sorry for me, or whatever. I have my own money; I can buy my own food.”

Lance sighs heavily with exasperation as he swallows his bite. “Dude, after all you’ve done to me, I really have no pity for you at all in my battered little heart, okay. It’s just rude to sit here and eat without offering and I’m not fucking rude, so pick something or not. I don’t care.” He releases the bag, leaves it sitting between them, and takes another large bite of his pastry, squaring his shoulders towards the empty field.

Silence descends over them for the next few minutes and it’s not necessarily uncomfortable. Keith stares up at the sky, calculating and wondering what this is about, feeling the tension of Lance’s questions sitting on the tip of the boy’s tongue in the air, yet unspoken. After Lance finishes eating, he finally clears his throat. 

“So...I kinda did some digging on you.”

Keith nearly jumps up and leaves right then and there. His shoulders tense up to his ears and he finds himself scowling. It’s not like his sad and tragic backstory is a private matter, because the entire Spirit World is perfectly aware of what it did to his clan, but he still doesn’t know what to think about the fact that Lance was researching him in his spare time. Thinking about him enough to want to know more. 

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“I don’t know. I guess I just wanted to understand...I’d really like for you to stop trying to kill me every time you see me.” Lance sighs and slumps back against the bench. “I’d also really like to know why you want me so dead.”

Keith watches the silhouette of a bat fly overhead. “You think I’d tell you?”

“I don’t...I don’t know.”

He frowns and glances at Lance’s face from the corner of his eye. It’s almost too dark to tell what his expression looks like, but he can see the sharp outline of his profile beneath the hood, the slope of his nose and the jut of his pointy chin. He licks his lips and then, “I hate you.”

Lance chuckles at that. “Yeah, I know. You’re not subtle. I mean, the whole obsession with murdering me in cold blood every day is a dead giveaway.”

“I hate that you won’t die.”

Lance laughs harder. “You and me both, pal!”

“I hate that you’re confusing me.” Keith rips his eyes away and stares down at his lap. 

Lance’s laughter tapers off and then there is tentative curiosity in his voice. “How do I confuse you?”

Keith grits his teeth, knowing full well that he shouldn’t say anything, but he’s still tired of this whole goddamn charade and it’s dark enough that he almost can’t see Lance even with the closest lantern, dark enough to pretend that he’s saying these things into an oppressive, lonely silence. “I’m confused because you’re  _ youmu _ and you’re human and I’m...I’m fucking tired, okay? I--I just want this all to stop. I don’t want to be here anymore, and I don’t want to see you and hear you and know that what I’m doing is fucking wrong.”

There’s a brief moment of silence and then: “Wow, I think that’s the most you’ve ever said in one breath.”

Keith feels his face get snarly again, mortified when heat begins to crawl up his neck. “Fuck off.”

“Yeesh, I was trying to lighten the mood. Calm down.” There’s a rustling noise and Lance clears his throat again. “If...If you’re so tired, why don’t you just quit being a spirit hunter, then?” His voice is much softer now and Keith thinks he hates that more than the jokes.

“You think I wouldn’t if I could?” Keith says quietly, hearing how dangerous and sharp his own voice is despite being just above a murmur. “You think I don’t wish every day that I wasn’t this way? That I don’t want a normal life?” He takes a controlled breath in and out through his nose, a white cloud in the dark, the chill of autumn pressing in through his clothes. He runs a finger along the bandage on his arm. “This cursed blood is anything  _ but _ normal. This power I have, what I’ve done with it…” he feels a tremble shudder through him, feels the guilt swell, thinks for a moment that he might be sick.

There is a quiet moment of stillness, like a gentle snowfall in December, softening the sounds of the city. Keith is way too exposed, and is incredibly stupid for saying something so blatant and vulnerable and he hates it, just like he hates everything else in the whole goddamn world.

“I’m the same way, you know,” Lance murmurs softly.

Keith’s breath catches in his throat. He turns to find Lance looking at him through the dark, the closest lightpost shining enough for Keith to see that there is nothing mocking or harsh or judgmental about his expression. He’s being honest, 100%. He’s answering Keith’s terrifying vulnerability with his own, even if Keith can’t possibly comprehend what it means. A reassuring smile stretches across Lance’s face, warm and wholesome as sunshine, soft as a sunset, and Keith thinks that no one has ever looked at him like that before in his entire life.

He rips his eyes away again, feeling more confused than before. Lance doesn’t elaborate on what he means and Keith’s first instinct is to doubt any sort of sympathy, especially since Lance can’t possibly know what Keith has been through in his life. Except that, he can hear Shiro’s words from yesterday still ringing through his head, and he can feel the absolute sincerity in Lance’s words like a physical thing on his skin.

They sit in silence for a while. Lance ends up eating another baked good from his bag and Keith keeps his mind carefully blank as he watches a few people on the other side of the open lawn walk hand-in-hand beneath the lanterns lighting the sidewalks. There’s a shift in the air between them and Keith is out of his depth because he doesn’t know how to act around someone who has so clearly tried to put himself on the same playing field as him. Doesn’t know how to deal with the fact that Lance isn’t afraid of him, when Keith is terrified of himself.

A breeze picks up, then, and Keith freezes when he feels the familiar presence of something dangerous nearby, almost undetectable under the heavy press of Lance’s aura.

Lance seems to sense his sudden intensity because he goes stiff beside him, sitting up straighter against the back of the bench. “What is it?”

“ _ Youmu _ ,” Keith mutters, pushing up the sleeve of his sweatshirt to yank at his bandage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hell yea, chapter 2! We're doing this! Hope you enjoyed the update! :)
> 
> Next chapter: a little bit of action, and a little bit of resolve. maybe even...a little bit of fluff?????

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! <3 If you have any questions, feel free to shoot them my way!


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